Privacy Policy

Internet Privacy Statement

Brewster House Bed & Breakfast (Freeport, Maine coast) has a strong commitment to providing excellent service to all of our customers and visitors of this Web site, including respecting your concerns about privacy. We understand that you may have questions about how this Web site collects and uses the information that you provide to us. We have prepared this statement to inform you of the privacy principles that govern this Web site, including Brewste House.com and any other Brewster House sites which may be included within BrewsterHouse.com, which are listed in this privacy statement (“Statement”).

At Brewster House, meeting and exceeding your expectations is the foundation of everything we do.

If after reviewing this Statement, you have any questions or privacy concerns please send an email to info@brewsterhouse.com or send a letter to:

Brewster House Inn, Inc.

180 Main Street

Freeport ME 04032

Browsing

This Web site does not collect personally identifiable information when you browse this Web site and request pages from our servers unless you voluntarily and knowingly provide it to us. This means that we will not know your name, your email address, or any other personally identifiable information just because you browse the Web site unless you:

access the Web site from a link in an email that we sent;

are a Brewster House Jarvis Club member and log-in to your account (if available); or

have created a profile (if available) and log-in when you access the Web site.

In these cases we may know who you are based on the information you previously supplied to us. When you request a page from our Web site, our servers log the information provided in the HTTP request header including the IP number, the time of the request, the URL of your request and other information that is provided in the HTTP header. We collect the HTTP request header information in order to make our Web site function correctly and provide you the functionality that you see on this Web site. We also use this information to better understand how visitors use our Web site and how we can better tune it, its contents, and functionality to serve you.

Information We Collect and How We Use It

When we need to collect personally identifiable information from you to provide you with a particular service, we will ask you to voluntarily supply us with the information we need. For example, if you would like to make a reservation at Brewster House, we will ask you for information such as name, address, telephone number, email address, credit card number, Brewster House Jarvis Club number (if applicable) and room preference to process your reservation. We will use your email address to send a confirmation and, if necessary, might use the other information to contact you for help in processing the reservation. We will also use your email address to:

send you a pre-arrival message summarizing your confirmation details and providing other information about the area and about Brewster House,

notify you about special offers and promotions as described in the email section of this privacy statement,

send you copies of your bills when you request them, or

send you periodic satisfaction or market research surveys.

You can opt out of marketing emails at any time. You can also opt out of Brewster House research surveys. The same types of information would be requested to complete a gift certificate purchase, register for a Brewster House promotion, enter a sweepstakes or online game, to enroll in the Brewster House Jarvis Club frequent guest program or to redeem Brewster House Jarvis Club frequent guest coupons. On occasion, we use third parties to provide us with additional contact information about you given the information you provided to us directly. For example, if we know your name and postal address, we may use a third party to provide us with your email address. We would then use this information for market analysis and marketing purposes.

Reservations

The personally identifiable information you provide to us for making a reservation is made available to Brewster House staff for the purpose of meeting your reservation request. After making a reservation or completing your stay at Brewster House, unless you tell us otherwise, the information you provide will be used by us for marketing of Brewster House and Brewster House products. Brewster House may use the services of third-party mail houses for the sole purpose of mailing materials.

Please note that Brewster House will never send you email requesting your user name, password, credit card number or social security number. If you receive an email that looks like it’s from Brewster House, but asks you for your credit card number or social security number, it’s a fraudulent email, or “phish.” We recommend that you do the following:

Forward the email to the Federal Trade Commission at spam@uce.gov or call 1-877-FTC-HELP (1-877-382-4357) to report it. The FTC uses the spam stored in this database to pursue law enforcement actions against people who send deceptive email.

Delete the email.

Securing the Transmission and Storage of Information

We treat the information you provide to us as confidential information; it is, accordingly, subject to our company’s security procedures and policies regarding protection and use of confidential information. When we ask you for credit card data, it is transferred over a Secured Sockets Layer (SSL) line, provided you are using a SSL enabled browser such as Microsoft Internet Explorer or Mozilla Firefox. We also use SSL on other pages where you would enter personally identifiable information. This ensures that your information is encrypted as it travels over the Internet. This secure mode is enabled before any such information is transmitted from your computer. You will know you are in secure mode when the padlock or key icon in the lower right-hand or left-hand corner of the broswer window appears in the locked position. In addition, when accessing a secure server, the first characters of the site address will change from “http” to “https.”

After information reaches Brewster House, it is stored on a secure server that resides behind firewalls designed to block unauthorized access from outside of Brewster House. Because laws applicable to personal information vary by country, we may put in place additional measures that vary depending on the applicable legal requirements. Information collected on the Web sites covered by this privacy statement is generally processed and stored in the United States.

Disclosure of Information to Third Parties

In addition to the reservation services and required information sharing described above, Brewster House may use the services of third parties, such as fulfillment houses, email service providers and mail houses that process mail for Brewster House. These parties are contractually prohibited from using personally identifiable information for any purpose other than for the purpose Brewster House specifies. We do provide non-personally identifiable information to certain service providers for their use on an aggregated basis for the purpose of performing their contractual obligations to us. Except as described in this Statement, we do not permit the sale or transfer of personally identifiable information to entities outside of Brewster House and our third party service providers for any non-Brewster House use without your approval.

Cookies

Our Website uses “cookie” technology. “Cookies” are encrypted strings of text that a Web site stores on a user’s computer. Our Web site requires the use of a Cookie throughout the online reservation process. Without Cookies we will not be able to keep information you enter on multiple pages together. For example, unless Brewster House.com can remember the dates you used in your reservation search, we will not be able to check room availability. Cookies also enable us to customize our Web site and offerings to your needs and provide you with a better online experience on BrewsterHouse.com. In addition, Cookies are used to:

Allow registered users to sign in without typing their sign-in name each time;

Measure usage of various pages on our Web site to help us make our information more pertinent to your needs and easy for you to access; and

Provide functionality such as online reservations, frequent guest transactions, and other functionality that we believe would be of interest and value to you.

The types of Cookies that we may use are referred to as “session” Cookies and “persistent” Cookies. Session Cookies are temporary and are automatically deleted once you close your internet browser. Persistent Cookies remain on your computer hard drive until you delete them or are otherwise removed upon expiration. We do not use Cookies to ascertain any personally identifiable information about you apart from what you voluntarily provide us in your dealings with Brewster House. Cookies do not corrupt or damage your computer, programs, or computer files.

We may use third-party advertising technology to serve ads when you visit our Web site and sites upon which we advertise. This technology uses information about your visits to this Web site and the sites upon which we advertise, (not including your name, address, or other personally identifiable information), to serve our ads to you. In the course of serving our advertisements to you, a unique third-party persistent Cookie may be placed or recognized on your browser. In addition, we may use beacon gifs (see description below), provided by our ad-serving providers, to help manage our online advertising. These beacon gifs enable our ad server to recognize a browser’s Cookie when a browser visits this site and to learn which banner ads bring users to our Web site and whether a reservation on BrewsterHouse.com is executed. The information our ad-serving providers and we collect through this technology is not personally identifiable.

You may set your browser to block Cookies (consult the instructions for your particular browser on how to do this), although doing so will adversely affect your ability to perform certain transactions, use certain functionality, and access certain content on our Web site.

Pixel Tags

Brewster House and its third-party service providers may use pixel tags (also known as “clear gifs” “beacon gifs” etc.). Pixel tags are not visible to the user of the Web site and consist of a few lines of computer coding delivered with the Web page. Pixel tags are not used to collect any personally identifiable information about you apart from what you voluntarily provide us in your dealings with Brewster House. Brewster House and our email service provider use pixel tags to:

Track customer response to Brewster House advertisements and Web site content;

Determine your ability to receive HTML-based email messages. Our email service provider includes a pixel tag, which they refer to as a “coded sensor” in all of the HTML-based messages sent on our behalf. The sensor activates when the email message is opened and flags the email address of the user as one that is capable of receiving HTML-based email messages. This capability helps our service provider to send the email in a format you can read. The sensor does not collect or use any other information. If you cannot receive HTML, you will not receive a functioning sensor;

Know how many users open an email and allow our service provider to compile aggregated statistics about an email campaign for us; and

Allow us to better target interactive advertising, enhance customer support and site usability, and provide offers and promotions that we believe would be of interest to you.

Emails about Special Offers and Promotions, Newsletters and Opt-Out

It is our intention to only send you email communications that will be useful to you and that you want to receive. When you make a reservation, subscribe to our eNewsletter, or request a copy of your bill via email and provide your email address, we will periodically contact you via email and provide information about special offers and promotions that may be of interest to you. These communications will relate to Brewster House offers which may also include the promotions of select, reputable third parties with whom Brewster House has a strategic marketing relationship because they offer products or services that we believe would be of interest to you. We may use third party email service providers to send emails. These service providers are contractually prohibited from using your email address for any purpose other than to send Brewster House related email. We provide you the ability to define and modify your mailing preferences online at anytime including unsubscribing from all marketing communications. In addition, every time you receive an email, you will be provided the choice to opt-out of future emails by following the instructions provided in the email. You may also opt-out online by updating your personal information with Brewster House, or sending a letter to Brewster House, 180 Main Street, Freeport, Maine 04032 USA. Please allow 10 business days for us to process your opt-out.

Other Sites

Brewster House is only responsible for the privacy statement and content of this Web site. We are not responsible for the privacy practices or the use of cookies on Web sites that you have accessed this Web site from and to the non-Brewster House Web sites that you may access from this Web site.

Legal Issues

This is a United States Web site and is subject to laws of the United States and the State of Maine. Brewster House will disclose personally identifiable information without your permission when required by law, or in good faith belief that such action is necessary to investigate or protect against harmful activities to Brewster House guests, visitors, associates, or property (including this site), or to others. As mentioned previously, laws related to personally identifiable information vary by country.

BrewsterHouse.com Changes to Your Privacy Rights

In the future, we may need to change this privacy statement. All changes will be made here so that you will always know what information we gather, how we might use that information and whether we will disclose it to anyone. This statement was last updated on April 24, 2012.